Is there a particular reason why they can't just stick to the fairy tale? Yes yes, feminism and women are just as good as men and blah blah blah but there's a reason why it's a timeless story. They're archetypes. We've been telling these stories for hundreds of years and in the future, you can be fairly sure that ass-kicking Rapunzel won't replace damsel-in-distress Rapunzel in the fairy tale books.

"...you can be fairly sure that ass-kicking Rapunzel won't replace damsel-in-distress Rapunzel in the fairy tale books."

agreed. i wonder how much literary merit this politically correct version will have?

It's sad to see that people are winding themselves up into a tizzy about Disney remixing the story to make it more empowering--or, to use another commenter's term, "politically correct." The "timeless" versions of most fairy tales we know aren't at all like the original stories, which were horrific and certainly not fit for a children's film, as anyone who wants to discuss "literary merit" should probably know...

Yes, let's do the same thing over and over again. If I wanted the original story I would go read it. I don't need a multi-billion dollar company to make a movie and put the original on screen just so I can say, "Why yes that's exactly like the fairy tale, good job." And for that matter the original tale would probably take fifteen minutes to show on screen and their wouldn't be any songs in it. Why don't you go see this one since it's by the same company that has brought us countless enduring classics before you make a judgment.

Anyone else sick of the CG Disney films? I know they have one coming out, but i'd love to see more of the classic 2D animated disney films.

Not every one necessarily, but perhaps one 2D for every one CG?

We can all agree that Disney’s Cinderella, Snow White, Sleeping Beauty are all classics. Yet even these movies were changed from the original source material. Have you ever read the original Sleeping Beauty or Snow White? They are violent!

Let Disney do what they do best….take timeless stories and turn them into beautiful movies with iconic princesses and heroes.

Angry Robot: don't worry. They're actually doing some unique work on the animation for Rapunzel, trying to make it look more like a painting. I also prefer the 2D princesses, but based on the concept art and preliminary images I've seen of this movie I think they're doing a great job with it. As long as Lasseter keeps taking cues from Miyazaki we should all be OK.

Yeah, there is a particular reason they can't stick to the fairy tale... where a character stays in a tower the entire movie, gets pregnant by a guy as a teenager, and gets banished to the desert by the evil witch, who then blinds her lover, after which they find each other and go off alone, no mention of the witch again. So yes, there is a reason.

"as anyone who wants to discuss "literary merit" should probably know..."

thank you for talking down to me. i hope you enjoy disney's watered-down version, replete with modern day pop cultural references. i have no doubt it will be designed to offend as few people as possible.

enjoy!

Princess and the Frog is traditional 2D, just as a point there, to the more 2D request

Well Shaun, you could use a little talking down to. Disney has always changed the original fairy tales. Read the original Peter Pan then see the Disney movie. It was made "family friendly" (which is another way of saying "politically correct"). The original Peter was a sociopath and wasn't much better than Hook himself in some ways. When he brings the children to Neverland for the first time he casually talks about killing a sleeping pirate. It was also implied that he killed some of the Lost Boys for questioning him or getting too old. Remember that Indian tribe? Originally they went around naked and carried the scalps of pirates and Lost Boys they killed. Oh and Tinkerbell... I guess you'd caller bi-polar. All she could handle was one emotion at a time. In the end Peter even forgot her existence (fairies don't live very long).

So may I suggest looking up the source material before talking about "literary merit" and how it was changed for a modern audience.

The Little Mermaid fails to win the love of the Prince and turns into sea foam at the end. Disney does this. Let the movie stand on its own without saying, "oh, it's not exactly like the original fairy tale."

if they derivate from the story so much why not go the extra mile and make it original without the explicit fairytale crutch? Shrek comes to mind as an example. a fantasy with original characters.

why not make a movie about a girl that goes on an adventure? why does it HAVE to be a princess or based on one? does it get street cred for having the recognizable name?

People complaining about originality. Why do you think they bought Marvel? So they can expand their branding and make up new stories baised on old stuff all over again. =)

L. Walker, actually, Disney and Pixar are working on an original "fairy tale" (I guess you could call it that), called The Bear and the Bow, in which, a female lead goes on some sort of adventure. So just hang in there for a couple years! It's on its way :D

L. Walker, I don't disagree with you in principle, but Shrek is not totally original. Much of its humor depends on its being a superb spoof of all of the Disney fairy-tale conventions.

Crespin, thank you for pointing out that it's 2D. Frankly, I don't know why so many (including the writer of the article) are saying it's 3D. Look at the picture at the top, folks! That's a hand-drawn picture, not CGI! :)

As for literary merit, or lack thereof - I don't mind the story being changed so the heroine actually does something rather than sitting around. A princess sitting in a castle for 90 minutes sounds like a boring movie to me.

All the same - whipping her hair like Indiana Jones? Using it as a lasso? Some of these ideas sound like a bad action movie.

Still, John Lasseter has something to do with the final project, so I'll certainly give it the benefit of the doubt.

"The tale of Rapunzel is that she sat in her tower waiting for some hunk to climb her hair and save her."

Technically, Rapunzel doesn't even wait for anyone because she's never even seen men until one climbs up her hair pretending to be the witch. Not to mention the prince never even saves her. If anything, she's the only one who saves him by curing his blindness with her tears.

Unfortunately, its this quick notion that all fairy tale girls were weak and "waiting for princes" that's apparently caused Rapunzel to have an unnecessarily generic feminist twist.

Yet another film based upon classical mythologies that will be utterly ruined by Disney. I gave up trying to watch Disney adaptation with my daughter years ago. The films are so abysmally bad that it is actually painful to watch them, more painful if you have ever even heard the basics of the original.

This adaptation, given the above description, Rapunzel sounds like a bad knock off of Shrek that will lack the humor. This sounds so horrible. Gah, I was almost hoping, given the title of the article, that the change would be that they would actually make a film adaption that was worth watching.

Sigh. . . this isn't science fiction.

Yah, I know that 'fantasy' is often somewhat related to sci-fi, but it isn't always so.

In any event, the name of the website is 'Sci Fi Wire'. Nothing in this story remotely pertains to science fiction in any way.

I know the haters are already frothing at the keyboard to rebut my comments here, and that's cool, it's a free country, but here's my suggestion. Somebody should start up a website called. . . I don't know, 'Fantasy Wire', as an example, and then that would be the perfect forum for this particular story.

Okay, rant away. I stand by my assertion:

'Repunzel'.
Isn't.
Science.
Fiction.
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Oops. I meant 'Rapunzel'. Funny, I'm such a stickler for misspelled words. . .

One further comment: I'm not saying that I'm angry that they're remaking old Disney movies and such, far from it. It's just that words mean things, and if you're on a website called 'Sci Fi Wire', you'd expect to find things on it that are related to SCIENCE FICTION. Not things that are. . . not. Ahem.

Also, to the haters: "I may disagree strongly with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." -Voltaire

Hey Al, from 9-21-09
I just finished reading the original Brothers Grimm fairy tale Rapunzel and aside from the guy falling from the tower and only sustaining the injury of blindness there was nothing that would've been too traumatizing for a child to see. So from that literary stand point there was no reason to alter the tale. Yes for the most part the originals had a dark and twisted side to them but Rapunzel didn’t. Now if you said it is because they didn’t think the original story would capture the interest of demographic they are going after then fine, I could agree with that, but it wasn’t because the original story would be too scary for the kids to handle.

Why more CGI? This would have been awesome as classic hand drawn. Especially with all the great things I'm seeing from Princess and the frog, I pine for more hand drawn work!

In response to the people complaining about the CG animation: This movie is planned to have the look of a moving painting. It won't look like typical CGI.

I'm sad if rapunzel is going to be computer-animated... I would have loved that all the princess tales was 2D...